


Swan in a Forest

by BananaNeko



Category: Vocaloid
Genre: Ballerina, Implied paedophilia, M/M, Open to Interpretation, Pretty Blonde Boys, Shota Len, Surreal, Written by Fangirl
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-27
Updated: 2017-11-20
Packaged: 2018-10-11 16:52:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10469709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BananaNeko/pseuds/BananaNeko
Summary: Starring Len, the ballerina. Don’t ask me why.





	1. Swan in a Forest

**Author's Note:**

> ...I do believe I’m going a little crazy. ._. Tell me if I'm right.

 

The dance studio is deserted this afternoon; the lights are off, and shafts of sunlight crisscross across the polished dancefloor, reflected by the mirrors. There are silver handrails along the walls on each side, straight and gleaming.

And a middle-aged man in a white shirt, standing transfixed beside the glass door.

Yes, the door is open; but he doesn’t dare step onto that dancefloor. There’s a certain sacredness that emanates from it, gripping his heart, unpolluted by worldly profanity – almost like there’s a separate, enclosed realm in that space, even though he knows there’s really nothing between them. He’s… afraid.

Just one petite figure stands poised in that forest of light and shadow, claiming the entire studio to himself – arms lifted in graceful arcs, toes raised perfectly parallel to the floor.

White organdie rustles. The boy – eight, or nine perhaps – does a quick pirouette, leaping; and the tight leotard hugs his slim waist, catching the light, almost translucent.

There is a strange mystique to it.

The middle-aged man falls on his knees with a gasp of joy, tears trailing down his flushed cheeks – still unable to believe this isn’t a dream. He finds himself trembling.

He knows - it's something he would never allow himself to touch, to defile.

Gliding along on the tips of his toes like an adolescent swan, the beautiful blonde boy pauses, arms outstretched – and smiles at the man sweetly, radiantly. Just a little confused, a little expectant. His skin glows pearly in the soft pastel lighting, which shrouds him in a mystical halo.

He sparkles in the afternoon light, like an angel.

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey I’ve decided to continue this! Not sure what I meant to do with it when I wrote Chapter 1… but anyway.
> 
> Also I am aware ballet dancers _usually_ don’t wear garters, but Len does in here because the author wants him to. Apologies to any ballet enthusiasts if they feel like suing me for giving the wrong image.

Garters carry a coy, dollish attraction about them.

Delicate strips of white lace, about the width of the man’s bratwurst finger, and perfectly fitting around the slim circumference of the boy’s upper thighs; as perfect as if they were hand-painted on his porcelain skin. They seem to sparkle as they flashe from below the organdie skirt, white as a snowy swan’s plumage.

Only the man’s loud, irregular breathing breaks the silence, only barely. Time seems to stretch on for eternity as he kneels there, his heart pounding faster and faster till he feels he might lose consciousness and wake to find it evening, and it all a peculiar daydream; a trick of the hazy high noon.

The boy steps faster and faster to an indiscernible tempo – as if to some strange music in the wind, inaudible to the impure – and the man finds himself unable to breathe.

Each movement is artless, yet strangely graceful in their artlessness; as if even the air would be charmed by them and lovingly drape itself around the boy’s tiny body, dancing with his limbs. Neat heels smartly tap, like tiny deer hooves – _un, deux, trois_ – and a quick leap through the air, demanding the attention and awe of an absent audience. Where the shafts of light from the window strike, his body gleams a blinding white. The sinewy yet unsteady pair of legs almost create the illusion of a fawn bounding through a shadowy dark forest, ghostly silver in their contrasting paleness – Time slows.

A sharp, silent climax.

Then a tenuous knee gives way, and the illusion stumbles, shattering the dream.

Suddenly, all the boy seems is fragile as he sits on the floor, panting. His head is bowed in slight pain, or perhaps hurtful disappointment in himself. Something makes the man want to cry for him as, after a short while, he picks himself up, and makes his way out of the studio with a sort of dignified limp.

Presently the man at the door, uninjured, finds his own legs devoid of sense. His heart leaps into his mouth as the boy limps foot by foot toward him. It’s almost as if the tiny presence burns him as he approaches. It’s the uneasy feeling of fiction merging with reality – as if the heroine of a tragedy is stepping out of a picture book, turning to address her invisible admirer.

The boy limps past the petrified man as if he were non-existent.

An embarrassing huff of breath leaves the man’s mouth as his heart skips another beat.

The sitting-room outside the studio resembles a kindergarten, walls painted in the likeness of a magical garden full of moths and hummingbirds, hung with pictures of the children in the ballet school. The boy looks effortlessly at home in the childish room.

He leans his weight on a counter near the entrance to regain his balance, holding his hurt left ankle above the floor. Yet strangely, he grows no less graceful – like one who wears injury as an embellishment, which simply adds a different sort of beauty to his aspect. The beauty of something fragile, and broken.

‘You can come in,’ he addresses the man in a lilting lark voice. The man jumps. The boy stares at him with a childish arrogance that somehow makes him all the more mesmerising. ‘I’m not afraid of you.’

The man stares back at him uneasily, body frozen in a horribly awkward position. For some reason, it feels as if the very act of standing in that room is a crime. Surely, countless parents had walked into this room and sat watching their children go through their lessons – but he has perfectly no business here. He isn’t even sure what made him step in to look in the first place.

‘Are you lost?’

His throat is completely dry as he attempts to reply. He feels like a dumb, gawping creature in a fishbowl – speechless before an inquisitor one fifth his age. Dumbly he follows the boy as he leaves the counter, keeping a tentative distance.

‘There’re no classes today, you know. It’s Sunday.’

The man tentatively opens his mouth. His tongue feels thick and dull. ‘Then… why are you here?’

The boy doesn’t reply – as if the answer is obvious.

Instead he pads away to the row of little child-sized lockers in one side of the room, and opens the third one from the right with a yellow door. A pile of tiny clothes are taken out. The boy sits on a bench and begins to remove his shoes then; and a pair of tiny feet emerge, as dainty as one might expect on a doll in a music box.

Irresistibly attracted, the man treads timidly up to him. Faint dizziness comes over him as he hovers behind the tiny figure like a hairy, lumbering bear.

The boy casually slips the left strap on his leotard off his shoulder, and then glances over that miraculously flawless, exposed shoulder at the man.

‘Well, anyway. Help me out of this.’

‘You want me to… _help_ – ?’ The man stammers in shock.

He feels light-headed.

The surreal air shimmers, as if to foretell the end of a quixotic dream; yet it doesn’t end. Nearly suffocating with exhilaration and fear, the man stretches out a trembling hand towards the exquisite creature in front of him. He hesitates, for a long, frightened moment – before closing his eyes, and touches the shoulder that is so inhumanly white it emanates an almost untouchable holiness.

He lets out a low gasp.

The boy sighs, and rolls his eyes in annoyance. ‘My _ankle_. I sprained it.’

The man stares stupidly at him. ‘W… Wha?’

He blinks and follows the direction of the boy’s hand, pointing to his legs.


End file.
